PhD position on Design for robotic recycling and material recovery

Passionate about sustainable design and the future of the circular economy? We seek a motivated PhD candidate to tackle the pressing challenges in design for recycling of electronics.

Job description

TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering has an opening for a PhD candidate in the Design for Sustainability section, contributing to the research and design of a novel approach to recycling electronic products.

Your challenge

Current recycling of electronic products recovers only 40–50% of collected materials by weight, resulting in significant losses of valuable and critical materials. Conventional shredding is imprecise, manual disassembly is too costly, and product designs are rarely compatible with advanced recycling technologies. To close this gap, smarter products are needed: designed from the ground up with end-of-life in mind.

Your research

You will explore how electronic products can be designed to enable controlled destructive robotic disassembly, combined with advanced sorting and reprocessing technologies such as AI-supported component recognition and chemical recycling. Your work will focus on product architecture and include:

• Analyzing the relationship between product architecture and robotic disassembly processes.
• Investigating innovative joining technologies, including active disassembly triggered by robots.
• Assessing recyclability across different end-of-life scenarios.
• Developing design guidelines and methods that integrate robotic disassembly into designers' workflows.

The developed methodologies will be validated through industrial case studies in collaboration with European manufacturing and recycling companies. The PhD includes two international secondments (2–3 months), providing direct exposure to industrial design practice, advanced technologies, and real world recycling constraints.

This PhD position is part of the academic network working on ecodesign, an international research and training initiative. The network aims to advance digital and ecodesign methodologies that enable circular economy practices at an industrial scale, in line with European sustainability and design objectives.

The research will be carried out in the Design for Sustainability section, part of TU Delft's Department of Sustainable Design Engineering. The section focuses on sustainable and circular product design throughout the entire product life cycle and offers a multidisciplinary environment where researchers work toward a circular economy transition, developing design methods that enable strategies like reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling. Its work spans design activities, material selection, implementation of emerging technologies, societal impact, and sustainability assessment, frequently in close partnership with industry and public organizations.

Job requirements

• Master degree in Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related field. Clear affinity with design engineering is required if not from a design engineering background.
• Demonstrated strong interest in design for sustainability and/or circular economy.
• Practical experience in design of electromechanical systems, robot programming, industrial or collaborative robots, or Life Cycle Assessment is considered an asset, but is not required.
• Scientific writing skills and effective communication in English, both orally and in writing.
• Motivated to collaborate in a multidisciplinary environment and participate in mandatory international secondments at industrial partners.
• International mobility rule: at the time of recruitment, you must not have resided or carried out your main activity (work or studies) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding 01/10/2026.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design to address challenges in energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society.

Faculty Industrial Design Engineering

The Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering focuses on connecting advances in technology with the needs of people, organisations and society to create products, services and systems with purpose.

IDE is a leader in design research across mobility, sustainability and health, as well as in the development of design tools and methods. A 350-strong research team and over 2,000 students work together in halls, labs and studios.

In close cooperation with industry, the public sector and NGOs, the faculty explores possible futures in research and education to design for a complex future.

Conditions of employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, in the form of 2 employment contracts: an initial 1.5-year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months, followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2.5 years assuming performance requirements are met.

As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

TU Delft also offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, a monthly work costs contribution, and flexible work schedules.